Despite the hopes of its Gilded Age developer, the spectacular oceanside resort of Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn never developed the cachet of old money Newport or elegant Long Branch.
But the upper-class guests who made the Queen Anne–style Manhattan Beach Hotel a premier sand and surf destination after it opened in 1877 certainly dined well.
This menu from the 1905 summer season reveals hundreds of dishes, from shellfish to soups to salads to “Long Island vegetables,” perhaps a nod to Kings County’s vegetable-producing past.
Calf’s head, calf brains, sweetbreads—the hotel guests liked their organ meats. Dessert doesn’t disappoint either. Look, they offer charlotte russe, a much-missed lost food of New York City.
By the time this menu (view it in its four-page entirety) was printed, Manhattan Beach’s glory days were behind it.
The enormous resort was demolished in 1912, not long before its rivals, the Brighton Beach Hotel and the Oriental Hotel, also met the wrecking ball.
[Menu: NYPL; photo: Getty Images]
Tags: Brooklyn Beach Resorts 1900, Charlotte Russe, Hotel Menu NYC 1905, Manhattan Beach Hotel, Menu Collection NYPL, Menu Manhattan Beach Hotel, Menus 19th Century, old menus
Ephemeral New York 
August 18, 2016 at 11:30 am |
Ha! “Farm to table” 1910’s style. By the way, most of LI was farms until after WW2…
August 18, 2016 at 2:03 pm |
Yes, and Brooklyn and Queens were considered the vegetable capitals of the country way back in the early 19th century!
August 20, 2016 at 12:52 pm |
the first thing I thought of when i saw “charlotte russe” was the clothing store….and here is why….
“Daniel Lawrence and his two brothers were raised working for their father in the clothing business in Brooklyn, New York. When they were older, they formed Lawrence Merchandising Corp., which opened a clothing store in Carlsbad, California in 1975. They named the store after a favorite French childhood dessert, Charlotte Russe. The owners opened numerous locations within San Diego, California throughout the 1970s and early 1980s.”
August 20, 2016 at 7:58 pm |
Charlotte Russe lives on . . . in retail!
July 22, 2022 at 3:18 am |
[…] since the 1870s, the Manhattan Beach Hotel was demolished in 1911, according to heartofconeyisland.com. The Oriental Hotel, hosting guests since 1880, met the […]